A widget refers to a stand-alone program with a small data size and is normally offered in the form of an icon on a display screen of a mobile device. Through such widgets, a user can easily obtain desired information even without using a web browser. The widgets used for the mobile device may be classified as offline widgets and online widgets. While the offline widget provides simple decorative effects such as a clock or a picture frame, the online widget informs the arrival of an incoming e-mail or offers real-time information such as news, weather, traffic, stock, and such. In particular, the online widget receives real-time widget update data from a widget server and displays it on the display screen of the mobile device, thus allowing a user to quickly obtain current information.
FIG. 1 illustrates a mobile device displaying online widgets.
Referring to FIG. 1, the mobile device displays, for example, a news widget 11, a weather widget 12, and a stock widget 13 on a screen. The mobile device receives widget update data from each widget server, namely a news widget server providing the news widget 11, a weather widget server providing the weather widget 12, and a stock widget server providing the stock widget 13. Then the mobile device outputs a display screen to which received widget update data is applied.
A mobile device may also have different widget buffers. When receiving widget update data from the respective widget servers, the mobile device temporarily stores received widget update data in corresponding widget buffers and displays it on the display screen. Recently most end-users may often use many online widgets in the mobile device. As the number of online widgets installed in the mobile device increases, the mobile device receives a large amount of widget update data in a short time. Whenever receiving widget update data, the mobile device considers it as an individual event and then processes such events one by one. Unfortunately, this may not only cause reduction in a processing speed when the mobile device applies widget update data to the display screen, but also lowers the performance of the mobile device.